Ah, well, that was the Christmas before Cuthbert went away. We had learnt to do without him now. Nevertheless, the carols, like many other things, were no longer quite what they used to be.
Hildred and Matt Clifford and I had been round with the waits this year for several nights.
It chanced that I was late in joining them on the evening of Christmas Day, and as I crossed the village green my father met and stopped me.
'I say, lad, you haven't heard the news.'
There was light enough for me to see the strange, awed look on his face, and to feel that whatever the news was, it had shocked him, and made him half-unwilling, and yet eager, to tell it. Besides, he had just a shade of that triumph which people's faces wear when they have foretold that something has come to pass.
'That boy Cuthbert has got killed in the wars.'
I stood still and stared at him.
'Yes, he has got killed, poor lad,' my father repeated. 'Esther Reynolds brought the news. Young Moore, over at the ferry, has come home, and she had it from him.'
Had Hildred heard it? That must be thought of first of all. Would there be time to stop them from telling her suddenly?—Hildred, who sometimes fancied that he was coming home, that he was near to her.
Old Esther Reynolds knew it—the greatest gossip in the village, to whom the telling of a bit of news was as the breath of life. No thought for Hildred would keep her silent, if she had the chance of spreading such a story as this. There was not a moment to be lost.